Residents Wake Up To Vicksburg Village Apartment Fire Friday Morning

Kathy and Scott Hanson were outside talking when they first heard the alarm.

"I said 'Do you hear that?' and she said 'Where's it coming from?'" Scott Hanson said. "Then we saw the flames."

The Hansons live at the large Vicksburg Village apartment complex on Rockford Road and Vicksburg Lane in Plymouth.

Around 4 a.m. Friday morning (July 12) a five-alarm fire ripped through one of the buildings in the apartment complex damaging nearly one-third of the 62 units in the affected building. The area where the fire started seemed to be contained to a building that faces out to Rockford Road.

According to initial media reports, there were no injuries or fatalities. A few residents were treated for smoke inhalation, but otherwise fine. There has been no word if any animals were injured or killed in the blaze. Red Cross was on hand to help those displaced by the fire. The cause and origin of the fire has not been made official. Patch is waiting to hear back from fire department officials.

The Hansons live in the apartment building behind and opposite of the one they saw aflame Friday morning. After making sure their children were safe in their own building, the two decided to go help their neighbors and started knocking on doors and windows to make sure people knew the alarm was for real and they needed to evacuate.

"I probably knocked on about 50 doors and went up to the third floor pounding on the doors," Hanson said as he surveyed the damaged building with his daughter around 9 a.m. Friday. "We saw people leaving and gathering outside. One person who I knocked on their door said, 'are you serious, there's a building fire?'"

Hanson said he has lived in the complex for the past two years with his two children, Kathy was visiting from Duluth at the time. He said there has only been a couple false alarms while he's lived there, but seen nothing like this.

By 7 a.m. crews from Plymouth and surrounding communities had cleaned up the scene and were escorting residents to some of the units to gather important belongings. There were still Plymouth fire and police officials on the scene at 9 a.m. 

Rambhupal Dupati and his family live in the affected building. Dupati was able to go back to his apartment unit for a few minutes after crews were done cleaning up later in the morning, but only to get keys, clothes and other essentials. Later in the morning, Dupati was at the main office building with a few others who lived in the damaged building waiting to find out more about the extent of the damage.

"First we heard the alarm going off and then we heard knocking on doors," Dupati said. "To be safe we went out the back window into the parking lot."

Dupati's wife first got out and then him and his son left when they heard door knocking and people yelling to leave the building.

As the family exited and got distance between themselves and the building they saw past the smoke and saw flames shooting high into the air out the roof.

"The shooting flames were probably 25 to 35 feet high," he said. " Police officers ran inside to help people get out and then the fire trucks came and surrounded everything. They all worked very fast."

Bhemmi Kanapuram who also lives in the fire-damaged building said it was the first time he's seen such a big fire. He, Dupati and new resident Venkata Suresh Jetty, who just moved there a month ago, do not know how much damage their apartment units have, only that the Vicksburg Village management staff won't be able to tell them much until this evening. 

Jetty said he knew that his apartment had smoke and water damage. None of them had any fire in their apartment units. The units in the middle of the building had the most damage and were gutted. 

"We watched them as they had hoses on the middle part of the building where the flames were coming from," Jetty said. "They sprayed water from both sides of the building and slowly brought them toward the middle."

Dupati said it was not an easy fire to control. 

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